Jonathan Edwards (theologian)

Jonathan Edwards (5 October 1703-22 March 1758) was an American revivalist preacher and Calvinist theologian. From 1733 to 1735, he oversaw some of the first revivals of the First Great Awakening, and he was known for emphasizing humanity's utter depravity and God's vengeful omnipotence. He was Vice President Aaron Burr's grandfather.

Biography
Jonathan Edwards was born in East Windsor, Connecticut Colony in 1703, the fifth of eleven children. He entered Yale College at the age of 13 and was known as a precocious child, and, when his grandfather died in 1729, he became the sole minister in charge of one of the largest and wealthiest congregations in the colony. In 1733, he began a Protestant revival in Northampton, and he helped to start a wave of "New Light" revivalism known as the "First Great Awakening". Edwards reaped a harvest of souls by reemphasizing the traditional Puritan doctrines of humanity's utter depravity and God's vengeful omnipotence, and his message was summed up in the title of his 1741 sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God". In 1758, he died from a smallpox inoculation shortly after beginning the presidency at Princeton University.